Just A Game

There's an improv game commonly used to warm up which I should do well at but don't. It's called "hot spot", and it's fairly simple. Everyone circles up except for one. That person gets in the middle and starts singing some ideally well-known song. It doesn't really have to be well known, because the point of the game is that someone else seizes on a word or phrase in the song and supplants the person in order to start singing a different song whose lyrics include that word or phrase.

I love music, and am into a lot of types of songs. Under ordinary circumstances, I can recall a fair number of songs and recite their lyrics with accuracy, or at least can recite enough to carry me until someone can begin with a new song. It helps if you can come up with songs people know, because they can back you up by singing alone or anticipating lyrics that you yourself don't know, and I don't have such a good command of known songs, but I should do well anyway.

I don't, of course. I guess it's a question of pressure. All the songs I would use abandon me in such times of need, or at the very least I lose confidence in my familiarity with their lyrics. I tend to stay out of "Hot Spot" if I can help it. I always feel bad about that, having been involved in improv long enough that I shouldn't have those wallflower incidents anymore, but that's how it is for me. It's deplorable, I know.

It is something I can get better at. As I was saying recently (and think about all the time), you can't have success unless you manage to forgive yourself for the failures you have had in the past. Regret or guilt about the past is a burden that ways heavily enough to keep you from ever advancing, and so you have to find a way of cutting that lose. Before I can improve at "Hot Spot", I have to forgive myself for every time I have done it less well than I would have liked, and I hope I can do that.